


Rescue Red

by Moxibustion (RyuuzaKochou)



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Bullying, F/M, Female Tim Drake, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Injury Recovery, Jason Todd Lives, Jason Todd is Robin, Neurodiversity, Not beta read we die like robins, Protective Jason Todd, Romance, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23610874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyuuzaKochou/pseuds/Moxibustion
Summary: A bullied Timi Drake meets her hero. Jason is struggling with a difficult recovery. They both help each other out in their own way.Direct spin-off/remix of The_Devil_In_The_Details_666 'sFast Friendships
Relationships: Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Comments: 20
Kudos: 471





	Rescue Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Devil_In_The_Details_666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Devil_In_The_Details_666/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Fast Friendships](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21141674) by [The_Devil_In_The_Details_666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Devil_In_The_Details_666/pseuds/The_Devil_In_The_Details_666). 



> Well, I started writing a Female Tim Drake story and then started rewriting a lot of the fics I was reading in my head going 'what if Tim Drake was actually female in this story', as I do. So, yeah, that's how this one came about. An anxiety riddled and long-term abuse sufferer Timi Drake meeting her most beloved hero in person for the first time.
> 
> I did a little research in to synesthesia, but am not an experiencer myself, so my descriptions are likely wildly inaccurate. To any actual experiencers of this phenomena, I apologise and welcome corrections. :)
> 
> This story is written with The_Devil_In_The_Details_666's permission.
> 
> Well, when I say permission? Devil? This is your last chance to yell at me.

Bradley had an awful, grainy voice; thick and rough like sandpaper on her knees. “You were warned, you ugly little twit!”

“I told you,” Timi croaked, holding her book to her chest like it was armour. “My parents said I had to play Moonlight Sonata for the class, I couldn’t change it!”

Bradley glared at her. “Harmony was going to play that piece! She warned everyone in the class that was  _ her _ piece! You went behind her back and played it anyway before she even got a chance you little freak! You little attention seeking freak!”

He punched the locker next to her head. She ducked, feeling the clang sizzle down her spine. “I couldn’t change it,” she repeated in a whisper.

“Yeah? Well no one disrespects the Queen and I can’t change that!” Bradley grabbed her by the arm and hauled her stumbling to an open locker. “Let’s see you steal thunder when you can’t fucking play!” He jammed her hand halfway into the locker and grabbed the door with his free hand.

Timi frantically tried to get her arm loose. “N-no! S-stop!  _ Stop _ !”

“Too late freak!”

Timi screwed her eyes shut for whatever good it would do.

SLAM!

There wasn’t any pain.

Cautiously Timi opened her eyes and was astonished to see Bradley’s face smashed hard into the closed locker door next to the open one by a strong, unyielding hand. It belonged to a figure which loomed over him by a good half-foot. Bradley wasn’t short, so this was a significant amount of height.

The tall figure abruptly released Bradley’s head and jerked the other boy back and away from Timi. As her arm slipped free of the flailing bully’s grip, Timi scuttled backwards out of the way.

Bradley shrieked. Pain bloomed across Timi’s forehead in sympathy with the bright red patch on Bradley’s where his skull had connected with the locker, leaving a sizeable dent in the metal. Her rescuer didn’t let go as the other boy tried to pull away. He gritted his teeth in a feral smile that went to the edges of his dark hair with a distinctive white splash in front.

Then all other considerations fell away as Timi realised she’d just been saved by Jason Todd.

The Jason Todd.

_ Robin _ .

“What the actual  _ fuck _ ?” Jason growled at the squirming Bradley. “What the fuck kind of dickbag goes around tryin’ to break girls fingers?”

“S-shut up! It’s none of your business, asshole!”

“Yeah?” Jason twisted Bradley’s arm up a little bit further until he squealed. “Well I’m makin’ it my damn business! You got a problem with that, douchnozzle, we can step outside and sort it out. We’ll see how fucking brave you are fighting someone your size!”

Jason let Bradley go and loomed right up into the gaping boy’s face. “Whaddya say, asshole? You and me, one round, no waitin’.”

Bradley backed up so fast he practically had a reversing alarm. “F-fuck off! You’re not worth a fight!” He couldn’t hold his voice steady enough to land the bravado.

“Yeah,” Jason smirked. “That’s what I thought. Piss off. And take that ugly horse faced snob with the camera – yeah, I see you there, honey – with you!”

He looked so utterly terrifying that Harmony, who had been filming at the far end of the hall, squeaked like a mouse and  _ ran _ , forcing Bradley to gracelessly stumble after her.

Then it was just them in the corridor. The other kids had all cleared out when Bradley started to make trouble. Nobody wanted to get on the bad side of Bradley Comerford-Renton III.

Unless you were Jason Todd-Wayne, who had no fucks to give on the subject.

“Hey,” Jason turned to her, his voice softening from a blitz of fireworks to it’s normal, softer sparkle. “Are you okay? He didn’t hit you did he?”

Timi went red as she realised she’d been staring at Jason like a concussed duckling. “Um… no. No, he didn’t. Thank you,” Timi pushed tendrils of hair away from her face. “For, uh, you know…” she trailed off into a mumble.

_ For heaven’s sake, Timi! Talk! Talk! Enunciate! You sound like a total idiot! Mother would slap you silly if she saw this! _

“Shoot, no worries,” Jason gave her a bright grin. “It’s kinda a hoot just to kick that pasty moron’s ass. The fact that it was righteous was just a bonus.”

Timi tried to find something smooth and polite to say, but the words jammed in her throat. “Right,” she croaked. “Um.” Her voice felt awful; thin, discordant strumming wires around her throat.

“I’m Jason, by the way,” he held out a hand.

Startled, Timi recoiled before her etched-in-stone etiquette training kicked in. “Timianna Drake.” She felt the hardened calluses of his huge hand wrap around her dainty one.

“Timianna, huh?” Jason shook her twig like fingers. “I might have ta get ya to spell that one.”

“Timi’s fine,” Timi fell back to mumbling and dropped her eyes again. She felt increasingly awkward; what was she supposed to say?

“Whatcha readin’?”

Timi looked down at the book she was holding to her chest like a life preserver. Too shy to speak, she wordlessly held it up as they began to walk into the more crowded corridors of the school. Uniformed students were milling around this close to the end of the day, but not very many. The school was fairly small and very elite.

“ _ Crime Scene Innovations In The Urban Landscape _ , huh?” Jason took in the title with interest. “Sounds like heavy reading. You into that sort of thing?”

Timi nodded. “Um… yes. I like puzzles,” she added, her voice barely a whisper.

He heard her. “No shit! Me too! We should study-buddy; the library is the quietest part of the whole school anyway. Whaddya say?”

There was no possibility Timi could make an adequate response to  _ that _ . Jason Todd would opt to spend time with  _ her _ , out of all his other options? Her chest felt like she’d just touched a live wire.

Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case was, she wasn’t required to. Harmony and Bradley came back around the next corner. “There he is!”

Then Harmony was shoving her phone right in a startled Jason’s face and blasting a shrieking, high pitched noise from her phone right in his ear. In a moment of poor timing, the bell to end the school day went off in the same instant.

The effect was deafening. Students around them flinched. Timi felt like someone had just sunk claws into her gut and dragged them downwards.

Jason howled and backpedalled, hands going to cover his eyes.

“See, babe?” Harmony smirked smugly. “I told you he was sensitive to sound these days. He got a pass out of Music and everything. He’s just another freak like her!”

“Not so tough now are you, street trash?” Bradley raised his foot to kick the cringed down Jason as he struggled to reorientate himself.

He’s completely forgotten the presence of Timi, who had cried out when Jason was hit, spun around, taken in the sight of the two villains and the seething, moving mass of escaping student body behind them, feeling the threads pull in her mind as she did so.

Hardly believing her own daring, Timi gamely ducked under Bradley’s immediate sightline – not difficult for her, really – and swung all one thousand pages of  _ Crime Scene Innovations _ right at the knee Bradley was leaning most of his weight on. Bradley stumbled backwards, flailed into Harmony, who shrieked and was knocked back by Bradley’s not inconsiderable heft into the stream of students going out of the doors, bumping another girl who was carrying an almost full purple grape drink.

Harmony’s custom made, pure silk white school shirt was suddenly half lavender. So was her face and hair.

She  _ screamed _ , her voice like snapping fingers. 

While the students all started laughing and jostling each other to avoid the spill and a teacher came running over, Timi took the opportunity to grab Jason and carefully steer him into a nearby classroom. The blinds were drawn. It was dark and empty. Timi carefully shut the door behind them, being careful to make as little noise as possible.

She’d had a theory about Jason ever since he’d come back to school. He’d been extremely badly hurt last year and had missed an entire school year as a result. She hadn’t had any concrete evidence to support her hypothesis and hadn’t dared even thought about asking but… this seemed like confirmation to her.

“’M okay,” Jason’s hands were still clawed over his eyes. “Jus’ gimme a sec.”

Timianna slung off her bookbag, unzipped it and dragged out her phone. She didn’t use it as a  _ phone _ very much, so there were a bunch of wires with a headset and a white plastic box-like dongle attached to it. She rapidly accessed a very unique application on the phone, fired it up and then gently put the headset over Jason’s head so it fitted snugly over his ears.

Jason startled badly. He hadn’t been expecting it and he took his hands from his face so he could cross them in front of himself in defence. Before he could yank the whole system from her hands, Timi hit a widget on the screen.

Jason froze as sound filtered through the headset to his ears. His eyes were watering like they’d been flash-blinded, and his brow wrinkled. He started blinking rapidly.

_ Find the right sound _ , Timi told herself.  _ I don’t think that’s the right stimulus! _

She swivelled the widget, which looked a bit like a compass or a clock face, on her phone screen. She moved the needle to the next dot on the circle.

Jason winced, so she hurriedly moved it to the next one.

Jason froze up, so she moved it to the next one; but then his hand shot out and he gently moved the needle back to the last one before screwing his eyes shut and then opening them again and looking around. He was breathing hard, like he’d just run a race.

She looked at the screen to see which sound recording he was listening to. It was the Singing Meditation Bowl of gentle, continuous chimes. It seemed to help.

Timi took a chance and grabbed one of his hands gently. She pointed at her eyes.  _ Look at me _ . Then she raised a hand as she filled her lungs.  _ Breathe in _ . She tapped out the time on his palm. One, two, three, four. Then dropped her hand;  _ breathe out _ . Tap, two, three, four.

He followed her during the next round, and the next. She could see the tension at the sides of his eyes start to ease as the breathing and her system did it’s job and helped him come down from the sensory overload.

Eventually after round upon round of breathing and staring into each other’s eyes, Jason cautiously peeled off her headset to start listening to the real world again. He did so warily, like he expected it to hurt. Timi kept still and silent.

Jason winced and grunted, hands moving up to run his temples, ears and eyes all at once.

Worried he might still be in overload, Timi whispered. “Jason, can you hear me? Jason?” No, he was still scrubbing at his ears. Even more worried, Timi blurted without thinking. “Robin? Are you okay? Robin?”

“Yeah, yeah, M fine,” Jason wearily rubbed his face. “Better now. Thanks for…” he waved his hands to encompass her system. He turned to look at her speculatively.

“O-oh. Um. No problem,” Timi stammered and fumbled around to put her system back in her bag. Anything but face his scrutiny.

Jason got to his feet, scrubbing the back of his head. His body was loose and casual but his eyes were razor sharp. “Hey Timi?”

“Yes?” Timi mumbled, feeling firework sparkles across her chest again.

“Why did you just call me  _ Robin _ ?”

Timi felt herself go white. She hadn’t, had she?

She  _ had _ .

She’d just called Jason Todd  _ Robin _ .  _ She wasn’t supposed to know he was Robin _ .

“I… I,” Timi felt her throat seize with panic. What could she say? Even if her expression alone wasn’t a dead giveaway, Timi couldn’t lie to save her life. “B-because you are?” she blurted, her anxiety making the tingling sensations all over her body worse and worse and somehow disconnecting all filters between her brain and her mouth. “R-Robin.”

“ _ What _ ?”

Jason was tall and she was still crouched drown on the floor, so his sudden lurch forward in surprise made him loom over her. Squeaking, Timi scuttled back into a desk and curled up, arms held up around her head protectively.

The charms on her charm bracelet chimed against the metal cuff of the bracelet, making a remarkably loud and pure tone, followed by silence. Cautiously, Timi lifted her head from her reflexive flinch.

Jason was standing there, looking bewildered. “What the…. You didn’t actually think I was going to hit you, did you?”

“Um, sorry,” Timi forced the word out. “Sorry.”

“Seriously? I don’t go hitting random kids,” Jason told her staunchly. “I sure don’t go around hitting random girls.”

“But,” Timi just couldn’t stop herself. “But I  _ know _ .”

“Yeah…” Jason drawled slowly, crouching down so he wasn’t looming over her anymore. “And you and I are going to sit down and have a chat about that. I only hit people who’re tryin’ to hit me  _ first _ . Okay?  _ You _ should know that better than anyone,” he slowly reached out and tapped the bracelet. It chimed. “I’ve heard that before. You’re the one who’s been following us around Gotham with a camera, ain’t cha? I saw you last week when we pounded Scarecrow near the Gardens.”

Timi nodded, too anxious to speak.

“I thought was going fucking nuts! Shit, Timi,” Jason gave her a hand up. “How’n the hell do you even keep finding us?”

Tentatively convinced Jason wouldn’t suddenly fly into a rage, Timi replied. “Um… your patrol routes are dictated by quadrant and season, plus the 4pm crime report data dump from GCPDs daily files. They tweet,” she flicked her fingers. “BOLOS and warnings by about four thirty. Clockwise in summer and spring, counterclockwise in winter and autumn, varied by the 4pm report and, during the night, the police scanner app. I have the app, too. Whatever quadrant you start in, you change up the next night by starting two streets further along, clockwise and counterclockwise respective to the season. Sorry,” Timi went red as she realised Jason was gaping at her. “I sometimes talk too much when I explain. Sorry.”

“That’s really fucking impressive!”

Timi blinked. “It is?”

“Are you  _ kidding _ me?” Jason squawked. “You just figured out the entire randomising algorithm of Batman’s patrols by observation and logic! Not even the police have managed that! Look, hows about you and me go somewhere and talk about this, ‘kay? I’ll pay.”

Timi nodded tentatively. 

“Great! C’mon, I know a place,” Jason gently took her by the arm and gently led her out of the classroom. “How smart are you, anyway? You look a bit young for a freshman,” he asked as they walked.

“I’m a Junior,” Timi mumbled, feeling the blush rise again. “I’m fourteen.”

“Holy shit,” Jason was awed. “You musta skipped a bunch of grades.”

Timi nodded.

“But doesn’t that mean you’re in a class with a pack of sixteen year olds?”

Timi shrugged. “They don’t bother me. They think I’m weird. Besides, this is a gifted school, isn’t it?”

“Gifted,” Jason snorted. “And for rich parents who want to be able to  _ say  _ their kids are gifted. How else could Renton the Turd have gotten in? He’s a fucking mouthbreather.”

Timi didn’t comment on this, but she admitted it was very true.

Jason had led her out of the school and into the nearest cafe, hand warm on her arm. He shooed her into a booth way at the back and came back a few minutes later bearing hot chocolates and muffins.

“Here,” he handed her one. “ _ Don’t _ tell Alfred - that’s the butler that picks me up. He’s pretty red hot on the subject of the awfulness of chain store levels of baking.”

Timi nodded hastily and dug in. She rarely got to have sugar so the muffin was almost too sweet. She kinda would have liked a coffee, but wouldn’t dare be rude and not drink her chocolate. 

“So, Timi,” Jason started, then winced as someone’s cellphone shrilled two booths over. His head snapped towards it and then he scrubbed his eyes. “Damn it. Sorry,” Jason muttered when he saw her worried face. “I got this tinnitus thing."

Timi blinked. Tinnitus? “Did you get it while you were...um, sick last year?” 

“Sick? That’s one way of puttin’ it, I guess,” Jason huffed. “Getting beat so bad I wind up in a three month long coma is another. S’okay,” he added when she looked stricken. “It doesn’t bother me, really. Most of it I don’t even remember. Just the,” he wriggled his fingers towards his ears. “Sound thing bugs the shit outta me sometimes. There ain’t much that I can do about it.”

“Is it colour,” Timi asked quietly. “Or is it feeling?”

Jason turned back towards her, shocked. “What?”

“Do sounds….” Timi took a breath and then the plunge. “Do the sounds turn into  _ colours _ , like little fireworks around the source, or do they turn into  _ feeling _ , like someone is touching your skin? I think it’s colour,” Timi added to Jason’s suddenly blank face. “You keep squinting.”

Jason gave a bitter half smirk. “I guess rumours of my broken brain have gotten around, huh? I guess I wasn’t so good at hiding how fucked up I am.”

“You’re not fucked up!” Timi retorted, suddenly furious. “Who said that to you? That's really mean!"

Jason was surprised into a smile. "No one said it but, seriously, everybody's thinkin' it, ain't they? So'm I. People with non-fucked up brains don't tend to spend their days hallucinating. That's kinda how people know they're not fucked up. Like, that's one of the criteria an' everything. You're a sweetheart for sayin' I ain't, but it is what it is."

"It's not hallucinations," Timi protested, feeling devastated at the brittle resignation in his tone. "It's just synesthesia. I know; I got it too."

"What?" Jason sat up straight. "Wait, what? There's a name for it?"

"Yes!" Timi ripped open her backpack and discarded books left and right to drag out her phone again, except this time she yanked all the accessories off so she could do a web search. She showed him the information page. "See? Lots of people have it. It's when one sense gets cross wired into another sense, so the brain interprets the information differently. Letters are perceived as having colours even if they are all printed in black. Words evoke a taste. Your synesthesia even has its own name. Chromesthesia; hearing sound causes the synesthete to perceive colours; sometimes in their heads but sometimes in the real world as well, from the direction the sound came from. It usually looks like fireworks or mist."

Jason scrolled through the pages, eyebrows climbing on his forehead. "Holy shit, this is an actual  _ thing _ ? Do you," he looked up at her. "See the colours too?"

The burgeoning hope on his face that someone actually _ understood  _ was a bullet through her heart.

"Not colours. Mine is auditory-tactile," Timi explained. "Sound becomes touch. It feels like things pressed or moving against my skin. Your voice is like, she waved a hand over her chest. "Warm sparkles bubbling around here. Bradley’s voice was like sandpaper brushing on my knees."

Jason made a face. "Didn't that hurt?"

"It's never painful," Timi assured him. "Sometimes it feels uncomfortable though. I'm used to it. All three of my types of synesthesia are tactile-effect."

"You have more than one?" Jason was amazed. 

"Most people with synesthesia do. I've got mirror-touch type as well," Timi gained more confidence as she warmed to her subject. "If I see someone get hurt, I feel pain where they do. Like, if someone stepped on your foot in front of me, my foot would start to hurt too. If I see someone crying, I might start to cry, even though I'm not upset. My brain has trouble understanding that I'm not the one being hurt."

"I gotta tell ya, that sounds like a really shitty superpower," Jason’s eyes were wide and concerned.

"It doesn't usually last long," Timi reassured him. "If I look away it fades pretty fast."

"I saw you wince when you saw Turds face after I smashed it," Jason grimaced. "Was that….?"

Timi nodded ruefully, poking her forehead. 

"Shit! Sorry bout that."

"You didn't know," Timi shrugged peacefully. "It doesn't linger."

"Oh," Jason looked down at the phone again, then looked up. "You said you had three?"

Timi’s confidence deflated when faced with admitting how defective she was. "The third one is kinda weird," Timi said in a small voice. This had been going so well. "Even for synesthesia. It's called kinaesthetic synesthesia. I can kind of… feel, like physically, the connections between things. Like, if I saw a sequence written on a board that went 2, 4, 6, 8 I'd feel the numbers were connected by a factor of two in the soles of my feet. If I see a lost child in a crowd and then see a scared woman running through it, I can feel in my elbows that one matches the other. You know how people say you can feel something in your bones? I kind of really do; like an actual sensation."

"Is that how you found us out?" Jason asked curiously. "You just kinda felt it?"

"N-no, it doesn't work like that," Timi felt her anxiety return at the pointed question. "I can feel connections, but solutions are different. Um. I-I…. my synesthesia helped me to confirm my theory because all of your voices feel the same to me even with voice synthesizers. But it wasn't… wasn't what made me figure it out. Um, I didn't mean to! It just sort of happened."

“Hey,” Jason reached out to take her hand gently. “Just remember I ain’t mad at ya. Really. I just wanna know what happened.”

Timi stared at the big hand engulfing hers, feeling like she was sizzling from top to bottom.  _ He’s Robin _ , she told herself fiercely.  _ He comforts people. Victims, kids; you’ve  _ seen _ it. It’s probably just a part of his training. _

She forced herself to focus. She’d had practice at that. “Um… there’s only three people on record that can do a quadruple backflip from a standing start.”

At his baffled look she nearly bit her tongue, feeling clumsy and stupid. 

“Um… Ricardo Grayson, deceased. John Grayson,” Timi hunched down smaller. “Deceased.”

“Dick Grayson,” Jason breathed. “Currently alive.”

Timi nodded. “I was there. Um, at the Flying Graysons last ever performance. My parents took me when I turned four. He was nice to me. Dick I mean,” Timi felt her anxiety ratchet up again as the memories came back. “He gave me a hug and said he’d do a quadruple backflip just for me. I mean, I know he did that for a lot of the kids, that was all part of the act, but… he was really nice to me. And when they fell,” Timi jolted in and out of a sense memory, her whole body jerking with the vividness of it. “I felt it. It hurt. Watching them. Seeing him. I think I might have passed out. The police found me after the evacuations and had to return me to my parents.” Saying they had not been pleased was a  _ vast _ understatement. “Anyway, um,” Timi shook away the old memory. “I felt really sorry for Dick. He’d been so nice to me and he was crying and…. Like I said, my brain can’t always tell the difference. I couldn’t stop thinking about it so my nanny helped me collect clippings and things of Dick Grayson, you know, from the newspaper and stuff. It made me feel better knowing he was okay. 

“I also collected stuff about Batman,” Timi added, blushing. “Because Batman’s pretty cool when you’re five. And when Robin came on the scene that was even better because he was just a kid, you know, just like me. I really admired him.”

“You used to dress up in stocking masks and a towel cape, didn’t you?” Jason smirked.

Timi blushed harder and nodded.

“Hey, don’t feel bad. I did too. Mind you,” Jason grinned. “Using moms old gold fishnet stockings and lacy red petticoats for capes didn’t quite have the effect I was going for. Jesus, I was lucky none of the other neighbourhood boys saw me like that. They’d have kicked the shit out of me.”

Timi stared at him and then let loose a string of giggles at the thought of a tiny Jason in a lace edged red cape. “Well, um, anyway. It was all fine until I turned eight. Then I saw Robin do a perfect quadruple backflip from a standing start. Then my two hobbies kinda of,” Timi brought her hands together. “Meshed together in my head. I… I actually set out to prove myself wrong because I thought it couldn’t possibly be right. But the more I looked the more… right it was.”

“Wait a minute,” Jason’s mouth dropped open. “Are you telling me you figured out the secret when you were  _ eight _ ? Holy shit, Timi!” his hand tightened on hers. “That’s amazing.”

Timi shrugged uncomfortably at the praise. “It’s just logic, biometrics and Occams Razor. Batman had bleeding edge tech. Bleeding edge tech requires money. Bruce Wayne has money, more than he can keep track of. Batman is about six-two if you shave off an inch or two to allow for the boots. Bruce Wayne is six-two. I mean, he could be  _ funding _ the Batman, but Occams Razor leans towards there being as few people as possible in the scenario and-” Timi looked up into Jason’s mouth which was twitching trying not to laugh. “Sorry. I… I talk too much and… I’m obsessive and weird.”

“I don’t think you’re obsessive  _ or _ weird,” Jason told her. “I think you’re awesome.”

“Oh,” Timi was taken aback. “Um. Okay. But that means you’re not fucked up either.”

Jason blinked.

“If I’m not obsessive or weird then, by your logic, you can’t be fucked up,” Timi repeated adamantly. “Because you’ve got exactly what I’ve got, haven’t you? So you must be awesome too.”

Jason stared at her before his face cracked into a soft smile. “Okay, I gotta admit your logic is pretty impeccable there.”

Timi shrugged, already feeling her face going red for her daring. She played with the charms on her bracelet for a while. She’d more or less run out of things to say. 

“You got somewhere to be tonight?”

What? “What?” Timi looked up in surprise.

“Plans,” Jason repeated. “Have you got anything on tonight?”

“Um… no? Just… just homework, I guess.”

“Food allergies? You got?”

Mystified, Timi shook her head. “No, none.”

“Great!” Jason beamed and pulled out his phone. “You can come over for dinner then. Thai basil chicken and mushroom rice tonight. Alfie’ll probably make a raspberry sorbet for dessert.” 

Timi stared at him open mouthed as he texted away. Jason wanted to what now?

“Done!” Jason put away his phone cheerfully. “Alfie’ll be by to pick us up in about five minutes. D’you need to call home?”

Timi rebooted. “Um. Not tonight. The housekeeper only comes Mondays or if I call her first.”

“What about your folks?”

“They’re on a trip,” Timi explained. “They won’t be back for weeks.”

Jason frowned. “Wait, are you all by yourself? Like, all the time?”

Timi shrugged. “Mostly. It’s okay. I mean,” she sheepishly pushed a tendril of hair away from her face. “It’s quieter that way.” And they were  _ all _ happier that way.

“Oh,” Jason was still frowning, but then a bunch of guys started yelling greetings across the cafe and he squinted again. “Yeah, I can see that might be sorta nice.”

“Um,” Timi sucked in a breath and took the plunge. “If-If you need more information on the synaesthesia I have lots of research. Tonnes. If you need it.”

Jason scrubbed his short hair. “Yeah, I might take a book rec or two. I coulda used it months ago, really.”

“Oh, you don’t need recs, I have it all here.” Timi over-eagerly yanked open her bag and upended it, spilling the contents everywhere in her haste. 

Jason grabbed her phone and various attachments before they could slip to the floor. “Where can I get one o’ these things? That sound blocker was real useful.”

“The system? I made that,” Timi said absently and she levered the last bits out of her bag. “Well, the headset I bought, but the dongle? I made that. That’s a sound amplifier. I made an app with a library of white noise - all different kinds. Kittens purring. Ocean waves. A breeze blowing. That sort of thing. The one you liked was the singing meditation bowl. Crowds are a bit much for me, especially when I’m tired or upset, so I use a manageable stimulus to block out an unmanageable stimulus. Does that make sense?”

“You built this? That’s fucking neat.”

Timi squirmed a little at that and pulled up the false bottom in her backpack. She drew out a tablet attached to a heavy duty power bank, but disconnected the bank. It was just there to keep the tablet charged. She awkwardly handed it across to Jason. “Um, there you go. That’s my research tablet. It’s got everything on it; books, articles, my experiments, links, everything. I was very… thorough.” Timi admitted, embarrassed.

“Good,” Jason told her firmly. “I need all the help I can get.”

A car horn sounded.

“That’s Alfie. Come on, we should get going.”

He helped her shove her things back in her bag, baffled her by taking her by the hand again and walking with her out onto the streets.

“Hey, Timi?”

“Yes?”

Jason smiled at her. “Thanks. For this,” he waved the tablet. “For everything. Just… thanks.”

Timi nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The sparkly feeling in her chest from Jason’s voice exploded into a wave of pure elation that filled her from head to toe. She could have jumped to the top of Wayne Tower from the ground in one go.

She’d been able to help  _ Robin.  _ Face to face, directly. He’d  _ thanked _ her.

Nobody would ever be able to take that away from her.

"Jason?" She made herself ask before the elation ebbed and her courage deserted her.

"Yeah?"

"What colour is my voice?"

Jason smiled. "Red."


End file.
